Free Not the Best Day by Brynn Stein Page A

“girl’s toy.” But it was one of the things she said she wanted, so that was what she was going to get. I juggled everything until I had a good grasp on all the packages. I only had one toy left to buy. Then I could move on to someplace that sold slightly more mature things. Though the way my two older brothers acted sometimes, maybe a toy store was an appropriate place to find gifts for them too.
    I made my way back to the doll aisle to see if it was clear yet, and it was a little better. There were only two women arguing over the ugly doll now. So I turned down the stuffed animal aisle instead. I grabbed a large lion with oversized eyes and told myself my youngest niece, Katie, would love it. She had recently started collecting lions, and this was the last one there. There were other types of wild cats with big eyes, but this would be perfect. Whether it would be or not, though, I was not going to get into it with the other customers over the more popular toys, and I just didn’t want to have to fight through another toy emporium. Nope, Katie would love it. I was sure she would.
    I was rearranging the packages in my arms to include the pillow-sized animal when a boy came running down the aisle and almost bowled me over. I scrabbled at the packages to save as many as possible from their rapid descent to the floor, but then a full-grown man took the same path as the kid and not only sealed the toys’ fate but mine as well.
    “Wait, you little brat!” he called after the kid. “Get your ass back here.” The second fleeing figure was probably over six feet tall, though it was hard to gauge a person’s height while sitting on one’s ass on a floor, surrounded by toys. He wore, among other things, a red and black trapper’s hat with a scarf to match. I couldn’t catch much more of a description than that before he was out the door after the kid. I couldn’t have described the teen at all except that he was male, scrawny, probably about thirteen or fourteen, and was running like the devil himself was after him.
    “Jerk!” I called after the man and was silently calling down all the plagues of heaven upon him.
    “Some people just can’t control their kids, can they?”
    An elderly female voice startled me. A grey-haired lady was crouched beside me with her hand outstretched.
    Well, at least there’s still one Good Samaritan , I thought as I grabbed her hand but got up under my own power. It didn’t appear as though she could hold my weight, but I didn’t want to refuse her offer.
    “You think it was his kid?” I glanced toward the door again as the woman helped me pick up my packages.
    “What else could it be?” she said innocently.
    “It seemed more like a robbery to me,” I posited as she handed me my packages one at a time. But I quickly forgot about it one way or the other as the lady and I engaged in a comedy of placing and re-placing the toys in my arms. I had the Legos under my left arm and reached for the baseball set, but she handed me the xylophone, so I shifted the Legos and put the baseball set in the left hand. But I dropped one of the boxes of Legos and she stooped down and picked it up, wedging it under my left arm with the baseball set. Then she handed the other Lego kit and the xylophone to me. By then my arms were so completely full that I couldn’t even shake her hand to thank her for the help.
    She must have seen my dilemma. “Oh, no need to thank me. I’m just happy to help.”
    “Well, thank you anyway. I do appreciate it.”
    “No problem at all. Happy to do it.” She turned back to her buggy and pushed it away. “You have a good day now, dear.”
    I stood there for a second, feeling as though I had forgotten something. I scanned the area, trying to remember what I had been looking for when it suddenly hit me.
    “Damn it! She took the last lion.” And I remembered again just how much I loved Christmas. Goodwill toward all. “Damn it to hell. All because of that trapper